[Kamog]

ALL engineers DO have girlfriends, if you count the imaginary girlfriends.

Well, why should someone spend a lot of money on a piece of jewelry that has no practical use? A wedding ring is a piece of metal with (usually) a polished stone attached to it. Does it really make a difference whether you spend $200 or $2000 or $20,000 on it? Given that the different priced rings have exactly the same functionality, it is logical to choose the most cost-efficient one. You can't go too cheap, however, because this is an emotional thing.

A calculator, on the other hand, does have more functionality when you buy an expensive one. The Hewlett Packard HP48GX is a very nice graphing programmable calculator with expandable memory.

By the way, Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) calculators are the best! RPN is more convenient because intermediate values are placed on the stack and can be viewed and manipulated.
Instead of entering this:
5 x (10 - 8 ) + 6 / 14 =
You do this:
5 enter 10 enter 8 - x 6 enter 14 / +
The only problem with RPN calculators is that when people borrow it, they spend 5 minutes looking for the = sign and then they complain that they can't use it. (And they're not interested in listening when you try to teach them how RPN works!)

And repairing a $5 radio, why not? It doesn't really matter how much the radio cost, you just open it up and try to fix it - just for fun!

Edit: I put "Enter" inside < > and it just gave me a blank space!

[ November 27, 2002, 04:50: Message edited by: Kamog ]